Daniel Herbert, attorney for Jason Van Dyke, argues that his client should not be charged with first-degree murder on Dec. 20, 2017, at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago.

Daniel Herbert, attorney for Jason Van Dyke, argues that his client should not be charged with first-degree murder on Dec. 20, 2017, at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

The lead attorney for indicted Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke slammed former Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez at a court hearing Wednesday, saying her prosecution of the Laquan McDonald shooting was selfishly motivated by media pressure and her fear of losing re-election.

“Political pressure dictated every single decision the prosecutor made in this case, including the decision to charge,” attorney Daniel Herbert said in his latest attempt to have the first-degree murder charges thrown out.

Gaughan also held that he found not a “scintilla” of evidence that Joseph McMahon, the Kane County state’s attorney handling the high-profile case as special prosecutor, had done anything wrong either.

Alvarez’s office took the rare step of criminally charging a police officer on the same day in November 2015 as the release of police dashboard camera video showing Van Dyke shoot the McDonald 16 times.

The court-ordered release of the video more than a year after the October 2014 shooting sparked weeks of protests, the firing of the police superintendent and a scathing report by the U.S. Department of Justice on Chicago police practices.

McMahon was appointed special prosecutor in the case last year after criticism that Alvarez was too close to Chicago police to handle the sensitive prosecution. Alvarez was soundly defeated in the Democratic primary last year by now-State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, who also criticized Alvarez for her handling of the McDonald shooting.

Earlier this year, a new indictment of Van Dyke added 16 counts of aggravated battery, one for each time McDonald was shot. McMahon did not give a reason for the move but denied it had anything to do with correcting any flaws with the initial charges.

Despite the fact that Alvarez was voted out of office and an outside prosecutor is now handling the case, Herbert’s argument focused on the former state’s attorney. He said Alvarez’s alleged misconduct in bringing the initial charges had an impact on the case as a whole.

Herbert argued that Alvarez bragged about being the first prosecutor in decades to charge a Chicago police officer with murder for an on-duty fatality.

“In her floundering election, she threw out a Hail Mary and said ‘Jason Van Dyke is going to save my election,’ ” Herbert said. “She charged him with the highest possible crime.”

The special prosecution team on Wednesday defended Alvarez’s actions while contending Herbert’s allegations were pointless given that an entirely different team of attorneys is now handling the prosecution..

“The prosecutor in this case is sitting at this table, and he’s not Anita Alvarez, and he’s not facing election considerations and wasn’t even accused of doing anything wrong in the indictment of Jason Van Dyke,” said Joseph Cullen, a member of the prosecution team. “The whole defense motion alleging misconduct by a prior prosecutor fails because that indictment does not exist.”

In a hint at his trial strategy, Herbert argued Wednesday that the first-degree murder charges were inappropriate in this case, citing Illinois law allowing police officers to use deadly force in multiple circumstances.

Herbert noted that both Alvarez and Foxx declined to charge former Chicago police Officer Gildardo Sierra for fatally shooting an unarmed man in 2011. Herbert contended the two cases were similar but that Van Dyke was charged with murder because outside pressure overrode sound prosecutorial judgment.

Cullen countered by saying that Alvarez’s actions were appropriate given the strong video evidence showing Van Dyke shoot the 17-year-old McDonald as the teen walked away from police with a knife in his hand.

“There was no vindictive or selective prosecution,” Cullen said at the hearing in the Leighton Criminal Court Building. “There was no evidence that the charges were brought for personal gain. They were brought because the evidence compelled the charges.”

Herbert has made repeated bids to have the indictment thrown out on various theories — all unsuccessfully.

Attorneys had also been slated to argue Wednesday on the defense’s apparent effort to include evidence at trial of McDonald’s criminal history to show the threat he posed that night. The paperwork, however, has not been made public on orders of Gaughan, a routine practice for the judge in this hot-button case.

But that discussion was postponed when a visibly frustrated Gaughan told Van Dyke’s legal team that the paperwork it had filed was not up to his standards. It was the third time this month that Gaughan publicly castigated the defense for what he saw as its lack of preparation.

“This is a little embarrassing,” Gaughan said Wednesday. “You should be a lot more prepared than this.”